Disentangling the unique associations of age, pubertal stage, and pubertal hormones with white matter microstructure in childhood and adolescence.

Overview

1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, MO, United States
2. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
3. Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
4. Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, United States

Abstract

Puberty is associated with hormone level changes that influence white matter development. It remains unclear how pubertal stage and pubertal hormones uniquely relate to white matter microstructure development. Further, it is unclear if white matter tracts develop along a hierarchical sensorimotor-association (S-A) axis, similar to other aspects of brain development. We used the Human Connectome Project in Development cross-sectional sample of 1,105 youth (aged 5–21 years) to investigate unique associations of sex, age, pubertal stage, DHEA, testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone with fractional anisotropy (FA) within canonical white matter tracts. The average S-A axis rank was calculated for tract cortical endpoints. Age was the best-fit model for 17 tracts with prefrontal, parietal, and temporal connections. The Pubertal Timing model (age-adjusted pubertal stage) was the best fit for the superior longitudinal fasciculus 1. The DHEA model was the best fit for the splenium, genu, and prefrontal body of the corpus callosum. The Estradiol model was the best fit for the ventral cingulum bundle, extreme capsule, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, and uncinate fasciculus. The Full model was the best fit for the rostrum. Radial diffusivity explained more FA variability than axial diffusivity in all tracts. Pubertal Timing and DHEA were more related to FA in association-related tracts than sensorimotor-related tracts. Thus, during childhood and adolescence, Pubertal timing and DHEA may be uniquely related to white matter tract microstructure in association-related tracts.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-lifespan-development — at Human Connectome Project; found in “Data and Code Availability”

Data and Code Availability

The HCP-Development Lifespan 2.0 Release is available for download from the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). Information about the release is available at: https://www.humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-lifespan-development/data-releases. The 2.0 Release includes cross-sectional visit 1 (V1) preprocessed structural and functional imaging data, unprocessed V1 imaging data for all included modalities (structural, resting-state fMRI, task fMRI, diffusion, and ASL), and non-imaging demographic and behavioral assessment data from 652 HCP-Development (HCP-D, ages 5–21) healthy participants. This manuscript used cross-sectional data from 1301 HCP-D participants, many of whom are not in the 2.0 Release, but will be available in the 3.0 Release.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 10 authors, 4 keywords, 2 funders, 86 references.

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This paper

Curtis, M., Yendiki, A., Cheng, T., Omary, A., Flournoy, J. C., Kandala, S., Sanders, A. F., Harms, M. P., Somerville, L. H., & Barch, D. M. (2026). Disentangling the unique associations of age, pubertal stage, and pubertal hormones with white matter microstructure in childhood and adolescence. Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.), 4, IMAG.a.1270. https://doi.org/10.1162/imag.a.1270

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